


Psychomachia

by papyrocrat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mindfuck, Season 9, mentions of past suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:45:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat





	Psychomachia

  
Hope  
  
He cracks his neck, still sore from its run-in with a dusty bar wall, and shakes some dampness out of his hair.  
  
He brushes the shelf with his fingers, blurring a decades-high layer of dust with smooth, clear streaks of mahogany. He hasn’t cleaned in here yet, not really, so much as dispassionately ordered the most useful books as an efficient distraction from his illness, moving faster and faster as his aches and fever grew.  
  
He’d wanted Dean to be able to find the important stuff, after.  
  
He has time now, time to inventory the collections in the back corners, time to sift through the folklore that’s more like fiction, time to settle himself into a chair that might have been his father’s father’s father’s and lose himself for a while.  
  
Today he wants a project, though, so he stoops down in the dim stacks for a heavy brown tome of apocrypha – not strictly useless, but not quite necessary.  
  
Sam has time, and it doesn’t weigh quite so heavily, today.  
  
  
  
  
Justice  
  
He opens the dungeon door alone, and more easily than yesterday. Crowley makes a show of not meeting his eyes.  
  
“Hello, Crowley.”  
  
Crowley makes him wait, wants desperately to keep him here as long as possible. “Hello, Shrek.”  
  
“How you doing?”  
  
Crowley glares.  
  
“So I was thinking-“  
  
“Don’t strain yourself.”  
  
“- about how you were talking about penance a few days ago.”  
  
“You were talking about penance. I was talking about you coming to your senses and realizing that we’re more valuable alive than dead.”  
  
“One of us is.”  
  
“And the other is looming about with a shit-eating grin in his gigantic gorilla head.”  
  
He tosses a flask of holy water to himself, left to right, right to left. “And you were wondering, Crowley, where to start. And I was thinking, you could start with doing right by Linda Tran.”  
  
Crowley’s eyebrows skip. “I told you-“  
  
“That she’s dead? Because I don’t believe you. I don’t think you waste perfectly good collateral.”  
  
“And the lovely Linda would be the finest of… _collateral._ ”  
  
He flicks the holy water in Crowley’s smug face.  
  
“This is your idea of playing good cop?”  
  
“Kevin’s the good cop. Dean’s the cop that didn’t want to kill you when he had the chance, though God only knows why.”  
  
“And you are…”  
  
“Open to negotiations.”  
  
Crowley rolls his eyes.  
  
“Where is she?”  
  
“I’ve given you everything I’m going to give you on Ms. Tran.”  
  
Sam shrugs and walks out. Give nothing, get nothing.  
  
  
  
  
Diligence  
  
Sam starts a little at a _fwhump_ from the barracks, then relaxes again at Dean’s voice. “Gimme the bag, Annie Edison.”  
  
“I can get my own shit, Dean,” Kevin says as they trundle closer to the library.  
  
“Clearly you can’t, since you just dropped your shit. Also, nobody’s going anywhere until I do a tablet search, because you…..atta boy. Yeah, this bag feels a little heavy for a prophet going on shore leave.” Dean sets the tablet down next to Sam’s open copy of the Sepher Ha-Razim.  
  
“Aw, come on. Sam, tell him this is stupid.”  
  
Sam laughs. “Check his Kindle, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah, you were gonna get your little geek tricks by me, good thing we have Sam here to…I can’t even make myself look through this fuckin’ list. Kindle stays here.”  
  
Kevin harnesses his inner reserves of repressed teen angst to glare daggers at them both. “You want to bore me to death _for my own good_?”  
  
“It’s for our own good too,” Sam says. “The past couple of weeks have been tough on all of us. We need you clear. Rested. Reliably conscious.”  
  
“Damn right. Pizza and porn binge, for the greater good. Come on. Let’s go. And you –” Dean wags a finger back at Sam “-don’t get crazy while I’m gone. About, uh, anything.”  
  
“So much for that kegger Crowley and I were going to throw.”  
  
Dean chivvies Kevin out the door, and Sam takes the moment to savor his privacy before turning back to the Book of Abramelin.  
  
  
  
  
Forbearance  
  
Dean hovers behind a pile of junk from the back room.  
  
“You’re not pissed?”  
  
“Uh. No?” Dean fiddles for a moment in a box full of firecrackers. “About what?”  
  
“That Cas just up and left like that.”  
  
“No! Why would I –“  
  
He’s obviously deflecting, but what are you going to do. “You’re obviously worried. I am too.”  
  
“Well, I’m not happy about it, but he’s a person now, right?”  
  
“No, I know, it’s up to him. I’m just surprised.”  
  
Dean shrugs tersely.  
  
“Besides, he’d be useful, taking a look at this tract. I don’t think I can even authenticate it. He’d probably know right away.”  
  
Dean crosses his arms and meets Sam’s eyes for the first time all day. “You’d think, wouldn’t you.”  
  
So he is pissed, but he’s almost admitting it, which is a step up. “He’ll call, Dean.”  
  
Dean shrugs his detachment back on. “I don’t know.”  
  
“I do, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
  
  
  
Prudence  
He leans one hand on one of the old machines and scratches absently at his neck. “Cut myself shaving,” he explains to Dean.  
  
“You haven’t shaved.”  
  
Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know I need to, I just have this rash. Do you think we have poison ivy or something?”  
  
“Where would we have poison ivy?”  
  
“Poison ivy? I know you’re nesting and all, but _gardening_ , Dean?” Dean flinches hard. “Sorry, it just didn’t sound like you. Gardening.”  
  
Then again, there’s a lot that doesn’t sound like Dean these days.  
  
 “….gardening?”  
  
“Do we have a garden?”  
  
Dean gives him such a baffled look that Sam wonders if Dean’s back to drinking in the middle of the day, but his brother’s hand is steady around a glass of water, so he lets it go.  
  
“Is there any aloe vera out there? I think I cut myself shaving, and it itches.”  
  
“Don’t scratch it, Sam.”  
  
“Scratch what?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
  
  
  
Charity  
  
“Couldn’t resist me for long, could you, big boy?”  
  
“It’s been three days, Crowley. But if you’re not ready for company, I can go.”  
  
“Three days?” The king of the underground blinks. “You were here yesterday.”  
  
“I was in New York yesterday,” Sam tells him.  
  
“Last night, then.”  
  
“You’re losing track of time.”  
  
“I’m doing no such thing,” Crowley blusters. “What’s this, Hawaiian Punch?”  
  
“Finally started clearing out some of the old rooms.”  
  
Crowley pulls a face. “Big Bird been scavenging?”  
  
You shrug. “Not like they’re coming back for it.”  
  
“Yes, done in brutally by my kind, possibly under my orders, I’m sure. You’re embarrassing yourself if you think a splash of bourbon is going to make me feel guilty.”  
  
“Just thought you might like a nightcap.”  
  
“And what’s the going rate for this nightcap?”  
  
“Nothing you got on you.”  
  
“So you’re just filled with the spirit of generosity, are you?”  
  
“Looks that way.”  
  
“This isn’t filled with the spirit of cyanide? Because you know, that won’t work on me.”  
  
“Well if it won’t work, what do you care?”  
  
“No free lunch, Moose. You don’t just get lucky.”  
  
Well, you do. “You just did.”  
  
Crowley looks at you for another long moment, but Sam’s face gives nothing away. “Why do you keep coming down here, Sam?”  
  
One of you sighs.  
  
“I really don’t know.”  
  
  
  
  
Faith  
  
“Sam, what you said back at the motel…”  
  
“It’s fine. Let’s just drop it, okay?”  
  
“It’s not fine.”  
  
Sam chokes back a yawn. “Okay, it’s not fine.”  
  
Dean maneuvers around in front of his brother and swings a flat, insistent hand between their faces. “I swear to-“ He cuts himself off.  
  
“-God?”  
  
Dean shakes his head. “To Mom.”  
  
Sam doesn’t see the need to bring her into it, but he lets it go.  
  
Sam lets a lot of things go, but you catch them for him, dust them off, and lock them away safe and sound.  
  
“I – we – are going to make this right for you. Do you understand me?”  
  
Of course he doesn’t. “I get it, Dean. I’m fine. I’m going to bed.”  
  
“Sam-“  
  
“Dean, I can’t do this right now. I hear you.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”


End file.
